MRI and prostate cancer diagnosis

Over the last 10 years, MRI has been introduced worldwide to help diagnose prostate cancer. Many patients with prostate cancer both over-diagnosed and over-treated and many others are under-diagnosed and under-treated. MRI is helping to address these issues and is reshaping prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment [8]. MRI is key because it is widely available, safe, low-cost, and can help patients avoid a painful biopsy that can have serious side-effects. It is the only imaging test that can reliably detect prostate cancer and differentiate it from benign conditions.

Improving the accuracy of cancer detection using MRI and Pi™

Lucida Medical was founded in 2019 by Prof Evis Sala and Dr Antony Rix with the vision to improve the accuracy, cost-effectiveness and productivity of screening for cancer using MRI. The company’s first product, Pi™ is a CE-marked medical device software that uses AI to assist prostate cancer diagnosis.
A patient with suspected prostate cancer has tests and a pre-biopsy MRI as normal. Pi™ then produces images identifying the prostate and suspicious lesions, and a template report with risk scores. Together, these are intended to assist the radiologist to locate cancer or rule out individuals who can avoid biopsy. A further potential benefit is that this automated analysis could save radiologists’ time.

How can we integrate the benefits of AI into radiologists’ workflow?

A study using historical data indicates that Pi™ has 93% sensitivity to significant prostate cancer at 24% false positive rate [11]. If this performance can be matched when it is used in hospitals, Pi™ could help reduce missed cancers and avoidable biopsies. But for this to be possible, it is essential that the software is easy for radiologists to use.

Collaboration with GE Healthcare and EMRAD

In 2021 Lucida Medical was selected from 350 applicants to be one of 6 companies included in GE Healthcare’s Edison™ Accelerator programme. Lucida Medical worked with GE Healthcare and the East Midlands Imaging Network (EMRAD), a pioneering organisation which has pooled radiology resources amongst a group of eight NHS trusts from across the East Midlands. The goal of this service evaluation project was to understand whether GE Healthcare’s Edison™ platform could enable Pi™ to easily fit in with the radiologists’ workflow.
Lucida Medical and GE Healthcare installed Pi™ in EMRAD’s data centre. GE Healthcare’s Edison™ Open AI Orchestrator provided the link between Pi™ and the radiology information system (RIS), picture archiving and communications system (PACS) and viewer, and reporting software used by hospital teams. With data remaining inside EMRAD’s secure firewall, example anonymised prostate MRI studies were processed automatically by Pi™ and the outputs were made available for radiologists to review alongside the original MRI images.